HL Deb 22 June 1863 vol 171 cc1234-43
LORD EBURY

rose to call the Attention of the House to the Distinction made by the Ecclesiastical Commissioners in the Distribution of the Common Fund between Benefices in public and in private Patronage; and to move to resolve, That, in the Opinion of the House, the Necessity of the Case and not the Incidents of Patronage, should be their main Consideration, as laid down by the directing Statute. The noble Lord said, that in bringing this matter before their Lordships, he would first of all give a brief outline of the circumstances that had led to the present position of the Ecclesiastical Commission. The Commission had been originally constituted by an Act of Parliament, which passed about twenty-five years ago. Various functions were by that Act intrusted to the Commissioners; and in 1858 the powers of the Church Building Commissioners were transferred to the Ecclesiastical Commission. At the present time this Commission had to take notice of about seventy Acts of Parliament. The Commissioners had a revenue of about £200,000 a year, with a floating balance of £200,000. No doubt the Commission existed, and for a long period had existed, only by continuance Acts; but any one who looked at the circumstances must be convinced that it would be for many years one of the great public Departments of the country, if it did not eventually become entirely permanent. There was reason for exercising great vigilance with regard to this subject. One of the difficulties which had to be encountered in dealing with this subject was, that as no one knew what the Commissioners were doing until the act was accomplished, any one who took objections to them had the appearance, and was sometimes charged with the intention, of moving a vote of censure upon them. Another difficulty in the way of a fair discussion of the question was this—that most of the leading men in both Houses either were now, or had been, Members of this Commission; and although they did not appear to know much of what passed in the Commission, yet somehow or other they seemed to think themselves bound by the decisions which it came to. For example, he had taken his grievance to the noble Earl below him (Earl Granville), who told him that he was one of the Commissioners, felt bound by their acts, and must decline to receive his proposition. Then he went to the noble Earl opposite (the Earl of Derby), with whom he was somewhat more successful; for although he did not receive any great promise of support, the noble Earl said, that when the proper time came, he was willing to hear what could be said on the subject. The fund to which his Motion related was originally of two kinds—the episcopal and the common fund; but the former merged into the latter, and it was the administration of the common fund with which they now had to deal. The 3 & 4 Vict., c. 113, by which the Commission was constituted, enacted (section 67), that if any surplus remained after keeping up the estates of the right rev. prelates, and paying the stipends of the canons and prebendaries, it should be applied in making additional provision for the cure of souls in parishes where such assistance was most required. With regard to monies arising from tithes, however, it was enacted, that whether there was a surplus or not, they must be answerable for local claims, and must go to add to the stipends of clergymen in the district whence the tithes arose. With regard to benefices patronage to which was in public hands, the Commissioners had been somewhat inconsistent. For some time they made augmentations without any equivalent at all; at other times they required from the persons having the disposal of those benefices an equivalent for the assistance bestowed; but in the case: of benefices in the hands of private patrons, there had been a uniformity of injustice, for the Commissioners had never given anything in the way of augmentation without exacting an equivalent from the patron, or some one interested in the advowson. Considering that this had been the practice of the Commissioners for a great many years, their Lordships would, no doubt, be surprised that this subject had never been brought forward until now. The reason was, however, a good one. When the Ecclesiastical Commission was originally constituted, great hopes were entertained that there would shortly arise, from the suspended canonries and other sources of income, a large surplus for division among the poorer livings. But this did not turn out to be the case, for, with the exception of a few augmentations between 1842 and 1844, there was no real surplus until 1856. Since then the surplus had increased largely; for, whereas in 1856 it amounted to £5,000, it rose to £100,000 in 1862. The Commissioners had this year introduced a rule, in reference to a certain class of livings, which had given rise to much dissatisfaction. They had determined, where the population was above 10,000, to raise the stipends of all the incumbents of such benefices to £300 a year. They proposed this with regard to livings at the disposal of public patrons; but in the case of livings in the hands of private patrons, whatever the population might be, they declined to augment the stipend without an equivalent. This had given rise to a great deal of murmuring, and some of the clergy aggrieved had requested him to bring the case before their Lordships. Now, there was nothing in the nature of private patronage itself, referred to in the Act of Parliament regulating the distribution of this fund, nor in any external circumstances whatever, which justified the principle adopted by the Commissioners. As to private patronage, it was unnecessary to say a word; for when the noble and learned Lord on the Woolsack lately proposed to transfer from public to private patrons some hundreds of benefices, their Lordships received the proposal almost with acclamation; nor had he ever heard that private patronage was at all worse administered than public patronage. The statistics of the case, deducting all livings the presentations to which were alternately in public and in private hands, showed there were in the patronage of private individuals in England and Wales about 6,000 livings, all of which were placed under disability by the rule he had mentioned. Let them take the population. The Commissioners proposed to raise the stipends to £300 a year where the population was more than 10,000. Of the livings in private patronage there were no fewer than 20 with more than 10,000 inhabitants, and less than £300 a year; and of these 20, 2 had more than 20,000, and 1 over 30,000 population. These livings had an aggregate population ex- ceeding that of several of the dioceses in England, and the average income was £147 a year each; and seven were without parsonage houses. Yet, by the rule of the Commissioners, these livings were not to receive a single farthing of the proposed addition, unless they found the means of offering an equivalent—an offer which was absolutely worthless under the circumstances. He would go lower. There were 38 incumbencies in the hands of private patrons, where the population was over 5,000 and under 10,000; 16 of these were without parsonage houses; and the average income was £124. Many of the livings which he referred to, where the population was over 10,000, were among the poorest and most distressed districts in the east of London, and the aggregate population was very large. His Motion did not go to the extent of binding the Commissioners in all cases, nor would it prevent them, in exceptional cases, from requiring compliance with any terms they might think it right to impose. There had been very great munificence, on the part of private individuals, in founding and endowing churches. Some of these instances were well known to their Lordships. In these cases the disability imposed by the rule of the Commissioners would act very injuriously. The Earl of Aberdeen had, at the cost of £10,000 or £12,000, built, and to some extent endowed a church in the populous district of St. George-in-the-East. The right of nomination was, of course, vested in the noble Earl; and if the incumbent applied to the Ecclesiastial Commissioners to make a grant in aid of the endowment, he would be told that they could not do so unless the patron would contribute a further sum in addition to the £10,000 or £12,000 he had already expended; but if he were inclined to pay more money, the Commissioners would grant a sum equal to the further amount contributed by the patron. In another case, where a gentleman had paid between £4,000 and £5,000 to form a district, the great tithes of the parish would soon come into the possession of the Ecclesiastical Commissioners; but, according to the present rules, no portion could be allotted to the district. He did not mean to make any attack upon the Ecclesiastical Commission. That body had been exposed to many and serious attacks; but, having sat upon two Committees—one in that House, and one in the House of Commons—to in- quire into the conduct and management of the Commission, he was bound to say, that although in his opinion they had made a few mistakes and probably perpetrated a few jobs, yet, upon the whole, considering the extent of their transactions and the novelty of many of the cases upon which they had to adjudicate, the Commissioners had administered the trust committed to them with fidelity and success. If, however, it could be shown that he had not overstated the hardships arising from the existing rules for the administration of this fund, he hoped their Lordships would assent to the Motion which he proposed. The noble Lord concluded by moving to resolve, That, in the opinion of the House, the Necessity of the Case, and not the Incidents of Patronage should be the main Consideration of the Ecclesiastical Commissioners, as laid down by the directing Statute.

THE EARL OF CHICHESTER

said, that when his noble Friend commenced his address by calling attention to the importance of watching over the proceedings of the Ecclesiastical Commissioners, he must have forgotten that their proceedings had been investigated by Parliament on several occasions, and that the results, upon the whole, had, he believed, been satisfactory. He should not think it his duty to enter upon this occasion into details, nor need he refer to the special cases which had been mentioned, as the noble Lord had not given notice of his intention to bring them forward. The best mode of meeting the remarks of the noble Lord would, perhaps, be to refer their Lordships to the Acts of Parliament governing and prescribing the conduct of the Commissioners and to their practice under those Acts; and he thought he could show that the distribution of those funds by the Commissioners had been in accordance with those enactments, and was not materially at variance with the course suggested by the noble Lord—namely, that in the distribution the wants of the assisted districts had been considered, and that there had been no question of patronage. The original Act 3 & 4 Vict., c. 113, directed the formation of a common fund, to be applied in making additional provision for the cure of souls in parishes where such assistance was most needed, and in such manner as the Commissioners should deem most conducive to the efficiency of the Established Church. The mode was left to the discretion of the Commissioners. Then there was a proviso, that in dealing with rents or tithes, due consideration should he given to the wants and circumstances of the parish or district whence such rents or tithes were drawn; and by a subsequent Act that provision was extended to all property whatsoever. There was an exception to that Act which enabled the Commissioners, if they thought fit, in places where there were large masses of the population, collected for the purposes of mining, to make temporary grants to meet benefactions. A Committee of their Lordships' House in 1858, appointed to examine into the state of spiritual destitution unhappily existing throughout the country, had inquired, among other things, into the administration of the common fund by the Commissioners; and in their Report the Committee stated that they were of opinion that the principle already applied to tithe ought to be extended to property of other descriptions, and that where there was a large population to be provided for they should have the first claim. It appeared to them, therefore, that the law should be so amended as to direct the Commissioners to deal with the property in question on that principle, so far as it could be done with the charges and obligation created by Parliament or already incurred by the Ecclesiastical Commissioners. In making this recommendation, the Committee assumed that on all occasions, except those of extreme destitution, the grants of the Ecclesiastical Commissioners should only be made on condition of their being mot by private benefactions in the manner after described; and the closing paragraph of the Report expressed a very strong opinion of the obligation which rested on the wealthy members of the community belonging to the Church of England to meet the grants made by the Commissioners in behalf of the spiritual destitution prevailing throughout England, which was so great that it was impossible it should be provided for without voluntary aid. He had now to state what had been the practice of the Commissioners in carrying out these enactments. The Report of the Commission which had been laid on the table this Session stated that the total number of benefices and districts augmented and endowed by the Commissioners amounted to 1,438, and the total permanent charge in respect of benefactions exceeded the sum of £107,000 per annum; in addition to this the Commissioners had annexed to livings tithe rent-charges of the value to £11,000 per annum. The Report also stated, that with a view to the further relief of spiritual destitution, the Commissioners lad determined during the current year, first, to appropriate a capital sum of £100,000 to meet benefactions already offered in accordance with their views published in Februrary 1862; secondly, to discharge those of the local claims proposed in the last Report to be immediately dealt with, which the £20,000 per annum then voted did not suffice to meet; thirdly, to augment, unconditionally, so as to raise to £300, the income of all benefices under public patronage where the population was not less than 10,000, except such as were subject to special legislative provision; and fourthly, to augment the income of all benefices in private patronage having a like population to a like amount, on condition that one half of the sum required for such augmentation should be provided from non-ecclesiastical sources. That was the course which had been taken by the Commissioners this year; and considering the Acts of Parliament he had quoted, and the Report of the Committee of their Lordships' House to which he had referred, he did not think the Commissioners could have done otherwise. With regard to livings having a population of 10,000 souls, it was determined by the Board that the grants should not this year exceed £10,000 or £12,000 a year. The Commissioners thought the livings in public patronage had the first claim; and though it was quite true that some of those in private patronage equally required augmentation, he thought the Commissioners were quite justified in requiring, at all events during the first year, that some attempt should be made in such cases to obtain subscriptions of a private character in order to meet their grants. Some of the large livings in the east of London might be cases of very great hardship, and some of them had the misfortune, if such it was, to be in private patronage. It might be expedient that the Commissioners should, in a future year, consider such cases, and if necessary—if they should see that there was no probability of private benefactions being forthcoming—it would be quite competent to make unconditional grants to those livings; indeed, such a proposal was before the Board, and there was no reason to suppose that any objection would be made to it on the part of the Commissioners. There was the other form of augmentation under the Act of Parliament by temporary grants, which were made whenever any one was able to meet the grant by corresponding subscriptions; these giants, however, were United to mining districts, and were not numerous. The only remaining mode of distributing the common fund was by augmenting livings from the annual grant of the capital sum of £100,000, during the present and preceding year, in conformity not with any restriction of Parliament, but with the frequently-expressed opinion of Committees, to meet benefactions of a corresponding amount. Provided the necessary sum was subscribed to meet the grant of the Commissioners, the grant was made without any question as to whether the patronage was private or public. In reviewing the course which the Commissioners had taken in this respect, he did not see how they could have acted otherwise, consistently with the express enactments and declared opinions of Parliament. With regard to the words of his noble Friend's Motion, although with regard to livings in private patronage they did usually make provision that some contribution should be made to meet the grant, yet he thought it could be shown that the Commissioners had done substantially what those words seemed to suggest—because in measuring the extent of any claim and the real urgency of the cases which came before them, the smallness of the income and the largeness of the population were the only elements to which they attached importance.

LORD PORTMAN

said, he must congratulate his noble Friend who had made this Motion, on the success he had already achieved; for, as he understood, a right rev. Prelate who had left the House had given a notice which would enable the Commissioners to carry out very fully that which his noble Friend wished to effect. That proceeding, on the part of the right rev. Prelate, had perhaps been expedited by his noble Friend's notice. [The Earl of CHICHESTER: No; it preceded it.] He believed that the greatest possible vigilance ought to be exercised by Parliament over this Commission; because, being a very numerous body, it did not act under the same sense of responsibility as it would feel if reduced within working limits. The fewer men there were to carry on the business of a large establishment like that, the more keenly would its administrators be alive to their responsibility to Parliament, and the greater would be the security for good management. He could not comprehend why the working of the Commission was so extremely costly as it now was. He had taken the best means in his power of investigating the accounts laid before Parliament, and he must say that they most fully answered their purpose. They gave an enormous quantity of figures, and there was the greatest possible difficulty in understanding what the results of those figures were. When, therefore, he said that, so far as he could understand, the management of the estates was so much per cent, he might be as far wrong as possible. But taking the totals according to the papers on the table, he found that the expenses of managing this enormous property amounted to something like 20 per cent of the income. The larger the property, the less ought to be the percentage for management; and therefore, he repeated, he could not understand why, in this case, the expenses of management should be apparently so enormous. There were very heavy charges for surveyors, accountants, lawyers, and the clerks of the establishment; and he thought that a great part of that outlay must be caused by a needless multiplicity of letters, by valuations and re-valuations, and other things which might as well be done without. If this enormous expenditure was necessary, there was an important question which, in his opinion, Parliament ought to entertain—namely, whether it was expedient that this property should be held in the hands in which it now was, and whether a great portion of it, scattered in all parts of the country, ought not perhaps to be realized. He believed it might in many cases be consolidated with great advantage, so as to insure to our poorer and most neglected districts that every farthing which the estates could yield should be applied for their spiritual benefit, without any waste or improper expenses of management. As, however, there was an inquiry going on in the other House of Parliament in relation to these matters, and after the assurance which had been held out that the subject of this Motion would receive consideration from the Commission, he did not see that any good would be done by dividing the House on the present occasion; and he would therefore suggest that his noble Friend should not press his Resolution. No one would venture now to defend the holding of a plurality of livings; but the insufficiency of endowment arose to some extent from the abolition of that practice, and there were cases in which the want at present felt might he met by the union of benefices adjacent, where there were very small populations.

THE EARL OF HARROWBY

said, that his noble Friend had stated that the cost of management of the Commission amounted to 20 per cent of the income; but it must be borne in mind that this percentage included the cost of buying and selling large estates, for every year the Commissioners had hundreds of thousands of pounds worth of property passing through their hands; and this, of course, involved an enormous expense for surveyors' and other charges. He believed that it would be found, on a better examination of the accounts, that the ordinary expense of management of the estates in the hands of the Ecclesiastical Commissioners was about 4 per cent—certainly not 20 per cent. The Commissioners were men the most conversant in these affairs, and had the most absolute control over them; and from the statements that had been laid before the public he had been led to the conclusion that the greatest economy was observed in the arrangements. With respect to the specific Motion of his noble Friend, he (the Earl of Harrowby) confessed that in principle he was completely with him, though he admitted that there was something to be said on the other side. There were calls enough of various kinds to swallow up all their resources. It must be admitted that these grants were often rendered of great avail as supplementary to other funds—for instance, where a sum was sought to be raised for church extension, a sum perhaps of £100 was raised in a parish, which was perhaps supplemented by £200 from the rural deanery; this, again, would be increased by a grant from the Church Building Society; and then came in the aid of the Ecclesiastical Commissioners in the shape of a grant, most valuable aid being thus afforded at the time when it was most anxiously needed.

After a few words from Lord EBURY in reply,

Motion (by leave of the House) withdrawn.